


I Will Not Ask You

by quailsareneat



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen, M/M, SDR2 Spoilers, something that could be considered character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 04:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quailsareneat/pseuds/quailsareneat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only photographs can be relied upon to capture a moment in time infinitely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Not Ask You

**Author's Note:**

> hey im back again with more talentswap photographer togami/hinata  
> and this time it's an au of the au  
> destroy my entire ass
> 
> songfic ; like real people do - hozier

_Honey, just put your sweet lips on my lips,  
We should just kiss like real people do_

Hinata's hand is warm. Tanned skin, sun-kissed, like a beam of light made touchable. He's capable of making any day stretch on forever; each happy moment becomes a lifetime. And Togami has experienced lifetime upon lifetime of happy moments now.

They had spent the summer on beaches, on pathways and trails leading them through the city outskirts, lazy afternoons in the cool shelter of their homes. Sitting here on the cement ledge looking out over the ocean, feet dangling, Togami feels like more than the ocean is spreading out into infinity in front of him. Squeezing Hinata's fingers, Togami laughs into the sunset painting them gold.

 “I like you,” Togami says. Hinata's surprise draws a smile on Togami's face, and he knows then that neither expected him to say it first. “I like you,” he repeats, and realises he might never stop saying it. His fingers run along the camera strap around his neck; he won't need a photo to remember this moment. Hinata's skin, glowing bronze in the light, eyes flashing as he turns to Togami, and before he can compose himself there are lips on his tasting like the ocean breeze, warm and smiling.

It's then that each infinite moment lasts for mere seconds, and Togami feels the hourglass inside him turn over. He had taken Hinata's talent for stretching time for granted; now, Togami scrambles, feeling as if he'll never spend enough time with the sun-soaked boy beside him.

Hinata draws back. Some of Togami's panic must show in his face, but Hinata laughs instead.

“You're over-thinking things again,” he says. And the day goes on.

 

***************

 

_I will not ask you where you came from_

Hinata knew enough not to press for information; Togami never offered. But slowly, they came to know each other. The divorce. The camera. The endless search for beauty. The identity born of lacking.

They didn't learn these things through words. It was the carefully measured gestures, the learned language. Personalities worn as body armour. But once you know how someone wears their armour, the easier it becomes to spot the chinks, the weak spots.

_I will not ask and neither should you._

 

***************

 

“Have you heard the rumours?”

Hinata's voice is casual, body leaning on the wall outside of a classroom. Students shuffle past them.

“There are always rumours here; you'll have to be more specific,” Togami says, but the corner of his mouth quirks up.

“Something about a top-secret project,” Hinata says. “What do you think?”

Togami stops to watch a girl who tripped in the hallway gather up her books. No one stops to help; he wonders if he should go over, but it would mean wasting precious moments away from Hinata. Ever since the day on the beach, the hourglass sand continues to fall.

“It cannot be very top-secret, if even you know about it,” Togami replies at last. Hinata snorts.

“Well, I guess they are just rumours,” Hinata says. He looks on the verge of saying something more, but the bell cuts him off, signalling the end of the break. “Shoot, I've got to get back to my campus.”

His fingers trail lightly along Togami's waist and then he's gone, lost in the sea of students.

_I knew that look, dear,  
Eyes always seeking_

Sitting in his classroom, Togami decides to listen more closely to the buzz of the students.

 

***************

 

It isn't until the first photo develops that Togami realises how long it's been since he last went out with his camera. It's a sort of therapy for him; a physical way to grasp intangible things, memories and moments that, on film, can't fade away. He had filled so many rolls of film during the summer, surrounded as he was by such beauty.

The sunlight-dappled water. A flash of a bird's wing. And everywhere, Hinata, all laughter and movement. All of the photos of him are blurry. Infinite moments.

Grabbing one of his cameras and scrawling a quick note he knows won't be read, Togami heads out into the autumn afternoon.

The leaves have fallen off the trees. He finds it impossible to capture life in this world of brown and red; it fills him with an emptiness he can't shake. After spending an hour wasting film, Togami walks back home, stomping on every crispy leaf on the way.

 

***************

 

“The rumours are true,” Hinata says into the silence one day. Togami doesn't answer, merely flips the page of his textbook, but he only pretends to read. After a while, Hinata continues, “I heard they're looking for volunteers.”

“Are they?” Togami says. His voice is practiced indifference. “I take it you're on the list, then.”

Hinata hesitates, then nods.

Inside, Togami is wondering why it all feels wrong. As if this is a universe he stumbled into by accident. Why is he upset, angered by Hinata's nod? Why isn't he trying to persuade Hinata to change his mind? Togami feels the rumblings of panic again. Where are the two laughing boys of the summer?

But it's something he's guessed at, in his subconscious, since he first felt the hourglass flip over.

After all, no one can make time stop.

_So I will not ask you why you were creeping;  
In some sad way I already know._

Togami doesn't bring it up again. Instead, he takes as many photos as possible. How Hinata holds his pencil. The weak winter sunlight that comes in through the library window as they study. He takes photos mentally when he's without his camera, focusing for long periods of time on singular things, committing them to memory. In this way he builds a tapestry of Hinata Hajime, one huge, unbroken project of his being.

 

***************

 

They can't resist the beauty of the freshly fallen snow much longer. Togami, bundled up; Hinata, in only a jacket. Noses red, they break two paths through the perfect surface. Togami wonders how Hinata isn't cold.

 _Maybe it's because of all the sun he soaks up in the summer_ , he muses.

When he turns to look at Hinata, he's momentarily blinded by the brightness of the sun behind Hinata's head, the sparkling snow that reflects it all around.

Then he's blinded for real by the snowball that hits him in the face and knocks off his glasses.

“You --” Togami grinds out, but Hinata is laughing so near him and wiping the snow off his face with his un-mittened hands that he can't stay mad. On the pretense of grabbing his glasses, Togami leans down, but makes a quick snowball instead. As it explodes on the side of Hinata's head, chaos ensues.

Through all of the flying snow, Togami's heart feels the lightest it's been in months. This is the Hinata he remembers. Laughing. Living.

Neither knows who slips first. But they slam into each other, tumbling in the snow, rolling down the slight incline, coming to a stop in a pile, tangled up in each other. They're both out of breath, and Hinata's laughter is close to Togami's ear. Togami opens his eyes to find Hinata's staring right back at him. They flash the same way they did on the beach, catching the watery sun, and he knows what's coming. This time, Togami leans in first.

There's none of the warmth of the summer kiss. Their skin is cold and specked with melted snow, and they're both still breathing hard from the fall. Togami can feel more snow melting down his neck, down his back, chilling him to the bone, but his chest is warm and he clutches to the sensation, hoping it will be enough to thaw everything icy in his thoughts. He imagines the snow turning to water around them, shying away from the heat of Hinata's summer skin. Leaving them in a circle of green grass, where the cold can't reach them.

When Togami opens his eyes, he's almost surprised to see the snow still surrounding them. It's disorienting.

Hinata sits up as best he can with Togami still on top of him. “I'm soaked,” he says.

Togami stands, offering a gloved hand to Hinata, still on the ground. Hinata's skin is red and freezing; absentmindedly, he rubs Hinata's hands between his own, trying to warm them.

“We should get inside,” Togami says. “Before you catch a cold.”

“I'm fine,” Hinata tries to reassure him, but his teeth chatter. Togami rolls his eyes, and together they start to walk up the hill back to his apartment.

When they both stop shivering, Togami pulls out his books to study; Hinata does the same. A sheet of paper falls out of his binder. He doesn't seem to notice, but Togami does. Picking it up, he intends to pass it over when certain words catch his eye.

“Hinata.”

His voice is deadly calm. Hinata looks up, sees the paper, and – while there's no noticeable change in his expression – something closes behind his eyes.

“I suppose you were rather higher up on the list than I thought.”

Hinata takes a deep breath. Lets it out, slowly.

“There was no list,” Hinata says. Togami tries to process this. “There was no list,” Hinata repeats. “I was the only volunteer.”

Togami remembers how Hinata had hesitated, the last time they had talked about this. The pause before he nodded. How everything had felt wrong. It registers, vaguely, that Hinata is still talking, but Togami isn't taking in a word. The sheet is crumpled in his hand.

_In some sad way I already know._

The last of the sand trickles into the bottom of the hourglass.

 

***************

 

Togami loses track of the weeks as they blur by. He follows his schedule – gets up every morning, goes to class, finishes his work – but does nothing outside of it. A layer of dust builds on his cameras. The snow outside gradually melts. The sun works its way higher into the sky.

They show up one day.

Togami's working in the library, writing an essay mechanically, when he senses he's not alone. Looking up, he sees a slim figure. Long black hair. Red eyes watching him, not with interest, but with a detached boredom. And Togami knows that Hinata Hajime's green eyes will never flash at him again.

“The project was a success, then,” Togami manages, trying to force his voice to stay neutral.

“Success can only exist if failure is an option,” they say. “The project merely worked the way it was designed to.”

And it was designed to destroy the one person I cared about, Togami wants to spit back, but he composes himself. Picks his pencil up again. Finds his spot on the page. Ignores the scraping of the chair on the floor that means that Kamukura Izuru is sitting down across from him.

But a buzzing fills his head as he tries to concentrate. The emptiness of the past three months threatens to suffocate him, and he is so desperate to have his best friend back that he decides to try anything.

“I loved you, you know,” Togami throws across the table.

“You can't have done. You only just met me,” Kamukura states plainly. “I don't know who you are.”

“Togami Byakuya,” he says. Let it jog some memory, he begs to himself, some lost little memory they didn't manage to remove.

“The one you say you loved no longer exists. It's inadvisable to continue to think that way.” There is no emotion in their voice; it isn't a cruel voice, but there's no softness to it, no attempt to make the words come across less painfully.

And, in spite of it all, Togami doesn't want to let go. Nothing of Hinata remains in the person sitting in front of him; nothing but the same tanned skin that no longer remembers that day on the beach, with the golden sunset and the kiss that began their invisible countdown. If he were a little more naive, or a little more optimistic, Togami might have been able to trick himself into believing that the real Hinata was still there underneath the scar tissue.

He is not naive. He is not optimistic.

After a long silence, Togami faces Kamukura.

“Then in what way should I think of you?”

“As a stranger,” Kamukura says.

 

***************

 

“You're holding your pencil wrong,” Togami says, annoyed.

“I'm holding it the way I've always held it,” Kamukura replies.

Togami pulls something from his pocket, slams it on the table. “There.” He presents it as indisputable proof: one of the photos he had taken of Hinata that day so long ago, the pencil caught in his hand. Kamukura regards it for half a second, then tosses it back.

“That isn't me.”

Togami's frustration rises. He's been pulling photos on Kamukura for a week now, trying to catch them off-guard and force a memory to surface.

He doesn't have any other option. If he stops, it's an admission that Hinata is gone.

“You could at least try,” he says, slouching in his seat.

“Try what?” Kamukura asks. They don't look up from their book, but there's a new edge to their voice. “You are still, by all intents and purposes, a complete stranger to me. You seem to have some expectation for me to act like a person I have never been. Perhaps you are the one who isn't trying.”

Togami opens his mouth to fight back, then closes it. It is true he hasn't given Kamukura a chance; but then, how can he? To accept Kamukura Izuru would be to accept what the school did, what the school turned his best friend into. It's unbearable to think about. But when Togami starts thinking this way, his resolve always crumbles when he realises that Kamukura is what Hinata volunteered to become. That Hinata chose this.

He wants to believe that Hinata had no idea what he was getting into. It's almost more terrifying to consider that – that Hinata didn't know he was going to be erased forever. But Togami, so long ago, had learned the chinks of Hinata's armour.

The lack of identity.

The lack of purpose.

He thinks of the albums he has filled, lined up on the shelves in his dorm, page after page of photos of Hinata. Detailed shots of all the tiny things no one thinks to remember, or notice. How he used to tie his shoes. When his tie would lay crooked on his chest. The way he wrote the date on the corner of his homework. And how he held his pencil.

One huge, unbroken project of Hinata Hajime's being.

Togami takes a deep breath. Lets it out, slowly.

“I suppose I should start trying, then,” he says. “Have you ever been to the beach, Kamukura?”

 

_I could not ask you where you came from  
I could not ask and neither could you._


End file.
